Soy Sauce Chicken

I could still remember the taste of the succulent soy sauce chicken that my confinement lady cooked for me. The ingredients used are so simple and the method is easy. The trick to make a yummy and fragrant soy sauce chicken is to use a very good quality light soy sauce. I grew up in a Chinese village in Kuala Lumpur. Our family never used any store-bought light and dark soy sauces right up to now. We are so blessed that we are able to get the supplies for both sauces fresh from a self-brewed vendor who will come to our place to sell the sauces in a small lorry. So far I could not get a brand of soy sauce that is closed to that standard. Recently I am pleased that I found this brand of light soy sauce that produced by Kwong Cheong Thye which is light, fragrant and not salty.

If you want to serve this food as confinement dish, do double the amount of small onions and add some ginger slices in but still the one that I had for confinement was without ginger. I served this with Koka fat free noodle which has no preservative. Though it was healthy but I didn't quite like the texture of the noodle.

Ingredients

3 drumsticks

Salt to wash chicken
 

1/2 cup soy sauce

1.5 cup water

10 shallots, skin peeled

1 cinnamon stick

1 star of anise

1 tbsp oyster sauce

1 tbsp black sauce

Dash of sesame oil
2 medium sized rock sugar
1 - 2 tablespoons of oil

Method

1. Wash and rub chicken thighs with salt. Remove fat under skin, pat dry and set aside.

2. Wash cinnamon stick and star of anise and set aside.

3. Put 1 tablespoon of oil and add cinnamon stick and star of anise when the oil is heated up.

4. Add in the shallots and stir fry for a minute. Then add in the rest of the ingredients except balance of oil.

5. Cook in slow fire for about half an hour. Switch off fire let the chicken rest in the sauce for at least 15 minutes before serving the dish.

Notes
1. You can use a thermal pot to cook this dish. Simply transfer the chicken with the rest of the ingredients in step 5 to a thermal pot and let it cook in the pot itself for one hour. For this method do reduce the amount of water to 1 cup.

2. You may replace the cinnamon stick and star of anise with a few sticks of liquorice root and a handful of tiny red rose buds for another new recipe. I tried this before and it tasted yummy and fragrant with mild rose aroma.

3. If you want a stronger herbal flavour and twist this further for a real confinement food, you may omit the shallots, cinnamon sticks, star of anise and all the sauces but add in Dong Kwai (Angelica sinensis), red dates, Goji (wolfberries) and condiment like chicken essence or Huiji Waist Tonic.

4. This dish goes well with rice or noodle and it is all up to you!

Indian Curry Chicken

This is my family's favourite curry chicken. I longed to eat it as i have not been cooking this for a long time. I used to cook this dish preparing all ingredients from scratch. The original recipe was taken from an Indian cookbook called 'Taste of India'. Suggested by the name, you should able to guess that all recipes found in the book are authentic Indian cuisine. Freshness of ingredients and uses of variety of Indian spices are not compromised. However, as much as I prefer and like the authenticity of Indian cuisine or any other cuisines, I don't think I have more energy to prepare this after a hard day of child caring.

This recipe that I came out with has almost all the essential ingredients needed to cook up an authentic Indian curry chicken. The trick is to use the ready-mixed wet curry paste that I could get in any local supermarkets in Singapore. The brand that I used is Hai's Chicken Curry Paste. It came with two types of paste; chilli paste and wet curry paste.  As they separate the chilli and curry paste, you could adjust how spicy you want your curry to be. I used one packet of chilli paste and two packets of wet curry paste. The wet curry paste has all ingredients that I needed like galangal, lemon grass, garlic, turmeric, candlenuts, salt and spices.

If you could not get this brand of wet paste curry that I used you could still make the paste yourself. Blend together one thumb-sized galangal, two thumb-sized turmeric, 5 candlenuts, 3 stalks of lemongrass, 5 fresh chillies (de-seed) and 10 dried chillies (soak and de-seed). 

Ingredients

1 bird 700g Chicken, chopped into big pieces 

6 medium-sized potatoes, peeled

2 packets of Hai's curry chicken paste (Use 1 packet of chilli paste and 2 packets of wet curry paste)

4 ripe tomatoes

3 cups of water

2 cinnamon sticks (about 3 - 4 inches)

8 cardamons

2 star of anise

10 cloves

6 stalks of curry leaves, stem removed

5 big onions, coarsely chopped

1.5 bulbs garlic, coarsely chopped

2inches of thumb sized ginger, sliced

4  - 6 tbsp of Baba's meat curry powder
3 - 6 tbsp cooking oil

Method

1. Remove fat from chicken, wash clean and marinate with two tablespoon of curry powder. Set aside for 15 minutes.

2. Meanwhile wash all the dried spices like cinnamon sticks, cardamons, star of anise, cloves, curry leaves and set aside.

3. Chop tomatoes and potatoes into wedges. Steam potatoes for 15 minutes and set aside.

4. Heat up 2 tbsp of oil and shallow fry all the dried spices for about a minute or until the cinnamon sticks opened up. Then put in the curry leave and fry for another 30 seconds.

5. Throw in ginger and fry for another 30 seconds then put in the chopped onions and garlic to stir fry for another 1 - 2 minutes or until fragrant but not burnt.

6. Add chilli and wet curry paste and cook for another 1 minute then add 2 tablespoons of curry powder and cook for another 30 seconds. Do add oil at this step if the paste stick to the pot.

7. Put in the chicken and continue to stir until chicken pieces are coated with the cooked spices and paste.

8. Slowly add in 2 cups of water when the chicken pieces started to change colour. At this point you could adjust the amount of water you want to add. If you prefer wet curry with thin gravy you may add up to 3 cups and reduce it to about 1.5 to 1 cup if you want it thick and dry.

9. Add in the potatoes and cook together with chicken for next 20 minutes with lid covered.

10. Add tomatoes in and continue to cook for 10 minutes. Add salt and a little sugar, switch of fire and cover for at least 20 minutes before you  serve the dish.

Notes:

1. Do look out and try other brands of instant wet curry paste that may have the essentials ingredients for curry chicken. I don't believe that there isn't substitute to the one that I am currently using.

2. You can twist this recipe easily if you want to cook Chinese curry chicken. Just omit dried spices and tomatoes. Add in more lemon grass and coconut milk.

3. If you want to have dried Indian curry chicken, simply add less water and cook with lid open. Vice verse if you enjoy curry with plenty of gravy yet thick do not sting on the curry paste and add in a little more water. Do take note that tomatoes will draw out its juices at the end so do not add in too much water otherwise the curry will turn watery and the flavour will be diluted.

4. I like this recipe as I do not have to grind any spices or ingredients but just simply wash and chop. Furthermore, it didn't call for coconut milk so you could really cook this in advance and keep them frozen for a week in the fridge.